Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/409

Rh and on his refusing to put away his wife he was deprived of his archdeaconry, which was bestowed upon the zealous legate. On the death of his uncle, the bishop of St David s, ill 1176, he was elected his successor by the chapter; but this choice having been made without the permission and against the will of Henry II., Girald prudently declined to insist upon it, and went again to Paris to prosecute his studies. He speaks with exultation of the prodigious fame which he acquired by his eloquent declamations in the schools, and of the crowded audiences who attended them. Having spent about four years at Paris, he returned to St David s, where he found every thing in confusion ; and on the temporary retirement of the bishop, which took place soon after, he was appointed administrator by the advice of the archbishop of Canter bury, and governed the diocese in that capacity till 1184, when the bishop was restored. About the same time he was called to court by Henry II., appointed one of his chaplains, and sent into Ireland with Prince John, by whom he was offered the united bishoprics of Femes and Leighlin. He would not accept them, and employed his time in ! collecting materials for his Topography of Ireland, and his history of the conquest of that island, which was completed in three books in 1187. In 1188 he attended Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, in his progress through Wales, preaching a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land, an employment in which he tells us, with his usual modesty, that he was far more successful than the primate, adding significantly, that the people were most affected with. Latin sermons (which they did not understand), melting into tears, and coming in crowds to take the cross. On the accession of Eichard I. in 1189, he was sent by that monarch into Wales to preserve the peace of the country, and was even joined in commission with William Long- champ, bishop of Ely, as one of the regents of the kingdom. He failed, however, to improve this favourable opportunity ; and having fixed his heart on the see of St David s, the bishop of which was veiy old and infirm, he refused the bishopric of Bangor in 1190, and that of Llandaff the year following. But in 1192 the state of public affairs became so unfavourable to Barri s interest at court that he determined to retire. He proceeded to Lincoln, where William de Monte read lectures in theology with great applause ; and here he spent about six years in the study of divinity, and in composing several works. At last the see of St David s, which had long been the object of his ambition, became vacant, and he was unanimously elected by the chapter, but met with so powerful an adversary in Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, that it involved him in a litigation which lasted five years, cost him three journeys to Rome, and ended in his defeat in the year 1203. Re tiring from the world, he spent the last seventeen years of his life in studious privacy. His MSS. are preserved in the British Museum, the library at Lambeth, and the Bodleian Library.

1em  BARRINGTON,, a nobleman distinguished for theological learning, was the youngest son of Benjamin Shute, merchant, aixd was born at Theobald, in Hertfordshire, in 1678. He received part of his educa tion at the University of Utrecht ; and, after returning to England, studied law in the Inner Temple. In 1701 he published several pamphlets in favour of the civil rights of Protestant dissenters, to which class he belonged. On the recommendation of Lord Somers, he was employed to induce the Presbyterians in Scotland to favour the union of the two kingdoms, and in 1708 he was rewarded for this service by being appointed to the office of commissioner of the customs. From this, however, he was removed on the change of administration in 1711 ; but his fortune had, in the meantime, been improved by the bequest of two considerable estates, one of them left him by Francis Barrington of Tofts, whose name he assumed by Act of Parliament, the other by John Wildman of Becket. Barrington now stood at the head of the dissenters. On the accession of George I. he was returned member of par liament for Berwick-upon-Tweed ; and in 1720 the king raised him to the Irish peerage, by the title of Viscount Barrington of Ardglass. But having unfortunately engaged in the Harburg lottery, one of the bubble speculations of the time, he incurred the disgrace of expulsion from the House of Commons in 1723, a punishment which was considered greatly too severe, and was thought to be due to personal malice on the part of Walpole. In 1725 he pub lished his principal work, entitled Miscellanea Sacra, or a New Method of considering so much of the History of the Apostles as is contained in Scripture, in an Abstract of their History, an Abstract of that Abstract, and four Critical Essays, 2 vols. 8vo, afterwards reprinted with additions and corrections, in 3 vols. 8vo, 1770, by his son, the bishop of Durham. In the same year he published An Essay on the Several Dispensations of God to Mankind. He was the author of various other tracts, chiefly on subjects relating to religious toleration. He died in 1734. Of his large family four were distinguished.

The eldest,, second Viscount Barrington (born 1717, died 1793), held important Government offices. From 1755 to 1761 he was secretary at war, from 1761 to 1762 chancellor of the exchequer, from 1762 to 1765 treasurer of the navy, and from 1765 to 1778 secretary at war again. He resigned in that year, receiving a hand some pension. In 1782 he held office for a short time as postmaster-general.

The Hon., the third son, born in 1727, was a distingished antiquary and naturalist. He was educated for the profession of the law, and after filling various posts, was appointed a Welsh judge in 1757, and afterwards second justice of Chester. He never rose to much eminence at the bar, but he showed his knowledge of the law as a subject of liberal study by a valuable publication, entitled Observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Charta to 2lst James I. cap. 27, with an Appendix, being a proposal for new-modelling tlie Statutes, 1766, -ito, a work which has a high reputation among historians and constitutional antiquaries. In 1773 he published an edition of Orosius, with Alfred s Saxon version, and an English translation with original notes. His Tracts on the Probability of reaching the North Pole, 1775, 4to, were written in consequence of the northern voyage of discovery undertaken by Captain Phipps, after wards Lord Mulgrave. In them he has accumulated a variety of evidence favourable to his own opinion of the practicability of attaining the object in which that voyage had failed ; and it is not improbable that his views and arguments had some effect in determining the Government at a later period to renew the attempt, Mr Barrington s other writings are chiefly to be found in the publications of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, of both of which he was long an assiduous member, and of the latter vice- president. Many of these were collected by him in a quarto volume entitled Miscellanies on various Subject^ 1781. Among the most curious and ingenious of his papers, are his Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Birds, and his Essay on the Language of Birds. He 